14 February, 2016

This Week In Videogames – 14/02/2016

There’s plenty of videogame love to go around this weekend,
we’ve got stories from the degenerate streets of New York, the besieged Gothic
Sector, Inabayama Castle, and more!

Oh Yeah, Multiplayer

Star Wars: The Old Republic, Knights of the Fallen Empire’s
new Chapter, Anarchy in Paradise dropped this week, alongside a HK-55 oriented
side mission and some welcome news about non-story content updates, PvPlayers
rejoice – I’ll fetch the rope myself for that one.

Knights of the Fallen Empire is about as divisive an
expansion as I could imagine, for players like myself, who revel in Bioware’s
Star Wars storytelling, it’s fantastic. But its solo focus has naturally left
the more social players, those there for the MMO side of the equation, in the
cold until now. On the latest developer livestream, Bioware announced a new PVP
arena map coming to Rishi, and a new Warzone map set on Odessa.

Both maps are due to arrive on the public test server in
two-three weeks, though there’s no full release date set for the Rishi arena.
The Odessan Warzone map is scheduled to launch in April alongside Chapter XII,
this map will feature cross-faction teams and be narrated by Lana Beniko. The
Warzone is a king of the hill-style affair, with two-five capture points
spawning on the map at any time.

They also confirmed that Chapter XI: Disavowed will launch on
March 10th, on the 8th with subscriber early access. By
the sounds of it you’ll be joining up Major Jorgan and Havoc Squad, of the
Republic Trooper storyline, to strike deep into enemy territory. Subscribers as
of March 1st will also get a HK-55-styled helmet. Upcoming quality
of life improvements and the Eternal Championship were also discussed, if
you’re interest, you can find both and an archive of the livestream by
following the link below.

Conversations Are Happening

A few weeks ago Capcom filed a trademark for Onimusha, a
long slumbering series that reigned undead and triumphant on the PlayStation 2.
In an interview with the Daily Star, linked below, producer Yoshinori Ono
revealed that discussions were happening as to the future of the series.

“Conversations are happening at high levels

"I've spoken internally with people who made Onimusha
with me originally and talked about maybe how interesting it would be to
revisit that series.

"But fans should know that we’re not further down that
road than the discussion phase.

"We [Capcom] realise the need for different series to
maybe come back into the forefront and although there’s nothing to talk about
right now, I’m sure in the future there will be news on variety of series that
will keep the fans happy.

"[Fan's] favourites are going to come back."

Yoshinori Ono is executive producer of the upcoming Street
Fighter V, and worked on the original Onimusha: Warlords.

Onimusha: Warlords was a hugely influential game for me, now
years later I’m beginning to see all the huge ways small parts of it have
changed the way I play games, what I expect from them, and more broadly, the
themes and styles I gravitate towards in other art forms. More than any other, Onimusha
is the game I want to see revived, or even just remastered – as Capcom is one
to do. But hell, ‘we’ve milked our current franchised, time to revive the dead
ones’ sounds terribly depressing.

More Fridges You Say?

The rumours were true, Tom Clancy’s The Division is getting
another beta, an open one this time that is set to start next week. Xbox One
players can get in on February 18th, PlayStation 4 and PC on the 19th,
the beta can be preloaded from the 16th. Here’s the latest trailer,
showing of the enemy factions old and new:

The open beta will feature all of the closed beta content,
in addition to a new mission ‘Subway Morgue’, introducing the new ‘Cleaners’
faction and engineer Paul Rhodes, which will unlock the first upgrades for the
tech wing. The Dark Zone has also received some tweaks, as shown below.

(Click to enlarge).

Intriguingly The Division will, on the consoles, allow
players to customise their graphical experience, in a manner similar to all
reasonable PC ports. Consoles players can adjust the severity of chromatic
aberration, in addition to image sharpness through anti-aliasing, all in
service of putting the ‘performance versus quality’ choice in the hands of the
player – for what’s it’s worth the closed beta performance was consistently
good without any tweaks.

Schreier’s Crystal Ball

Ubisoft is threatening to release all manner of titles
within their next fiscal year, from April 1st 2016, to March 31,
2017. With For Honor, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Ghost Recon
Wildlands, and Watch Dogs 2 all slated, as well as ‘a brand new franchise’ with
a “strong digital live service offer”. Given how badly The Division and Watch
Dogs one repeatedly slipped their windows, I seriously doubt all of the above
will make it, but we’ll see.

As you no doubt noted, there’s no Assassin’s Creed title in
that list, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier was right yet again. In a post on the
UbiBlog, Ubisoft announced the off-year, not confirming its rumoured ancient
Egyptian setting, but I know where my money’s at.

“This year, we also are stepping back and re-examining the
Assassin’s Creed franchise. As a result, we’ve decided that there will not be a
new Assassin’s Creed game in 2016. Since the release of Assassin’s Creed Unity,
we’ve learned a lot based on your feedback. We’ve also updated our development
processes and recommitted to making Assassin’s Creed a premier open-world
franchise. We’re taking this year to evolve the game mechanics and to make sure
we’re delivering on the promise of Assassin’s Creed offering unique and
memorable gameplay experiences that make history everyone’s playground.”

No Assassin’s Creed games, aside from the two Chronicles games
they quietly plopped out, and this month’s Assassin’s Creed Identity on mobile…
They’re not games obviously.

Broken Promises

Schreier was also right about the shakeup of the Destiny
schedule, developer Bungie announced that a “full sequel” is in the works for a
2017 release, it was originally slated for 2016. Sometime in Spring an update
will “feature a significant Light increase, a bunch of new gear to earn and
equip, and new challenges for PvE players seeking some more fun experiences and
replayability”, with a larger expansion hitting later in the year.

If you’re at all interested in Destiny, or Bungie, or
stories of tragedy in general, look no further than Schreier’s coverage.

Fiesta, Forever

While Bungie continues to flail ineffectually at scheduling
and post-release support, their old child the Halo franchise has never been
better nourished. Continuing in their monthly free content drops, 343
Industries released a preview of Hammer Storm.

The game modes Assault, Grifball, and Slayer Fiesta well be
added, alongside a new map called Torque; all that was shown was a cropped
version of the concept art to the right, I pulled the full version from Sparth’s
Tumblr.

Of course, there will be another hefty drop of REQ cards. Of
the few they’ve revealed we know the Brute Gravity Hammer will be making a
return. Less costly are the changed coming to the armour and emblem colouring
systems; the 32 colours are swelling to 60, with what sounds like a real black
being added. Emblem ‘harmonies’ (colour palettes) are being removed in favour
of individual colour selection.

The Whisperings Of The Trailer God

Now let’s get back to the games that matter; the Warhammer
ones. Battlefleet Gothic Armada dropped another trailer, this time showcasing
the Chaos fleet and its demonic progression, narrated of course by my favourite
disembodied Focus Home Interactive voice talent.

A New Breed Of Conquest

I have no shame admitting the scepticism I held over
Creative Assembly’s announcement of Total War: Warhammer, despite how it may
seem from the outside, the pull of Warhammer is not the same as that of Total
War. Of the battles I had no concerns, but until this week, campaign dynamics
were bothering me more than I care to admit.

There are two developer blogs I would direct interested
parties towards, both linked below. The first discusses perhaps the most
radical change to the Total War formula to date; not all regions can be
occupied by a given faction. For example; the humans of the Empire cannot
settle into Greenskin mountain holds. It iss lore friendly, and I hope
long-term gameplay friendly too; there’s a point in every other Total War when
my faction grows too big to be threatened, thus killing my interest. Total War:
Attila appealed so much because as the Western Roman Empire, I was caught in a
storm of attrition and loss that lasted for dozens of hours, and I don’t
believe I ever truly grew to an invulnerable size. My worry now is that without that conceptual
goal of domination, the campaign may lose its purpose.

The second post details the minor factions, their role in
the campaign along with a map of all initial starting locations. It tells of a
campaign with the potential to be wondrously complex.

(Click to enlarge).

And finally, a short walkthrough of the campaign was
released, following the Empire. Narrated by Al Bickham, it gives a good look at
the some of the new campaign mechanics, including those unique to the Empire,
and the ability to rename your officers – hurray!

German Sausage

In the event that you haven’t had enough of Warhammer, Total
War, or strategy games in general, Sega have launched another ‘Make War Not Love’
event. Now three years in the running, the event sees Creative Assembly and
Relic Entertainment, studios owned by Sega, beseeching their fans to play their
games. This year a third challenger has entered the mix; Warhammer 40,000 Dawn
of War II.

In essence it’s whichever game logs the most wins by players
in game, factored into some nebulous weighting system. In 48 hours cycles old
Sega titles will be free to download for the leading community, with a
game-specific DLC made free for the overall winner. In the case of Total War:
Attila, it will be the upcoming Slavic Nations culture pack.

A Company of Heroes 2 win will see the British Forces
standalone multiplayer expansion made free, while Dawn of War 2 offers the Tau
Commander for Retribution’s Last Stand mode.

A side effect of this, is that the Relic and Creative
Assembly Twitter accounts ramp up into a slagging match over the course of the
competition, with gems such as this: